LOS ANGELES — The night belonged to their teammate, Shohei Ohtani, but two World Series heroes got their flowers on Thursday night as well. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was named first team All-MLB for his performance on the mound in 2025, while his batterymate Will Smith got the nod for the second team catcher on the squad.
Yamamoto, the unflappable (and seemingly unbreakable) righthander from Bizen, Japan saw his second year in the big leagues be an improvement in almost every metric from his solid rookie campaign. The 27-year-old finished the regular season with a 12-8 record in a career-high 30 starts, with a 2.49 ERA while posting an MLB-best 5.9 hits per innings pitched. And, while these postseason honors do not take into account October performance, his stock went soaring all over the league with his heroic efforts throughout the playoffs, and especially in the World Series, where he put together a string of incredible performances for the ages.
Joining Yama on the first team are starting pitchers Garrett Crochet of the Boston Red Sox, Max Fried of the Yankees, Paul Skenes of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers, as well as relievers Aroldis Chapman of the Red Sox and Jhoan Duran of the Minnesota Twins/Philadelphia Phillies.
Other Dodger pitchers were not selected, which is not that surprising, given the injury-riddled rotation, and the fact that none of the “Big 4” besides Yamamoto got anywhere close to the number of starts of the other pitchers selected.
As for Smith, his selection as an All-MLB catcher is the capstone of a fantastic year. While Cal Raleigh got the first string nod (not surprisingly), Smith was clearly the cream of the rest of the catchers in the bigs this year. He finished his regular season with a career-high .296 batting average, notching 17 home runs and 61 RBIs. And that doesn’t even count his postseason heroics: catching 18 innings in Game 3, drilling a go-ahead homer in Game 7, which ended up being the World Series winner, and navigating a pitching staff that mowed down hitters all the way to the Fall Classic.
For Yamamoto and Smith, it simply reminded the baseball world that these two dudes were awesome this year, and will be at the tip of the spear as the Dodgers go for a three-peat in 2026.
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